they state clearly that users are not allowed to solicit explicitly gifts. so, this is a clear violation of their own terms of services let alone, of course, the rights of those people. most of the accounts we followed regularly went live with children begging for hours at a time. tiktok s guidelines say, we prohibit activities perpetuate the abuse, harm, endangerment, or exploitation of minors on tiktok. we reported more than 30 accounts using children for begging in the app to see what tiktok would do about this. at the time, tiktok said there was no violation for every single one of them and the videos remained live.
tiktok said it removed the accounts that violated its community guidelines and ended its contract with the agency giant mina. we asked giant mena, but they didn t respond. as for tiktok, they told us they don t take 70% of profits from live gifts, but they wouldn t confirm the exact amount or what commission they pay to agencies. so, we repeated our experiment with accounts in the uk and syria that weren t signed up to agencies, and found that tiktok took just under 70% every time. most of tiktok s downloads come from apple s app store and google play. both of these have codes of conduct that say apps that facilitate the exploitation of children will be removed or rejected. we asked them what they were doing about children begging on tiktok, but neither apple nor google would comment
matt navarra is a social media consultant and analyst. why do you think tiktok is placing so much emphasis on the duration of these lives? tiktok has got a ferocious appetite for growth, like most social media platforms. livestreams inevitably pull people in for longer duration. the longer that they spend on the platform, the more revenue they generate for the business, the more information they glean from its users in terms of how the algorithm works. in your video, it s obviously prolonging the pain for somebody that already is in a desperate situation. we wanted to put these allegations to tiktok and asked them for an interview. instead, they gave us this statement:
or speak to. keith used to be a professional rugby player and has nearly a million followers on tiktok. he donated £300, around $350 in tiktok gifts, to a family in syria, and he encouraged his followers to do the same. i love you. i love you, thank you. they was calling me muscle man and stuff and he was going through google translate saying, my kids love you. they love your hair, love it. and itjust the buzz, the energy was fantastic. i probably think over £1,000 would have been put in there and that, to them, would have been a lot of money. we got the money! we asked a charity in syria about how children are being used in these videos.
a long time in the life of a chancellor. marc ashdown, bbc news. now bbc news investigates a new trend on tiktok: hundreds of families in refugee camps in syria, begging for gifts on tiktok livestreams. there s a new trend on tiktok. children in camps in syria begging for hours on end. they re asking for tiktok gifts that can be withdrawn as real money. but that money isn t all going to them. we ve been following more than 300 accounts going live on tiktok, trying to work out where that money is going. tiktok has got a ferocious appetite for growth. the longer that they spend